astrodanco, post: 406384, member: 7558 wrote: Sounds like they need a middle man to buy up large numbers of sections, have them surveyed, markup the price to cover costs and then some, subdivide and sell off as smaller tracts. Another way for the 1% who already have more money than they know what to do with to make even more money off the rest of us. Isn't that the American way? Bend over and take it? Beats paying taxes doesn't it?
Alaska is an odd case. The entire state has fewer people than the city where I live and of those with jobs, roughly one-third work for the federal government. The jobs of the other one-third depend upon the oil industry, with the remaining third doing everything else.
The notoriously pervasive political corruption of Alaska probably means that all sorts of odd things happen for the benefit of just a handful of people and public policies likely reflect that fact.
Paul in PA, post: 406294, member: 236 wrote: " I have no doubt the new system will work, the reason this is so controversial is not the technical difficulties. It is that the expenses that were paid for by the federal government in all the other states are now being passed on to the State of Alaska."
"in all the other states" Excuse me, the Federal government did not pay a dime for any surveying in the Colonial States. And in fact the original colonies were the sole source of funding as the government began surveying he West.
For the PLSS states the system was set up to allow for fast surveying to a minimal tolerance, expecting monuments (right or wrong) to be set and to be held for the record. The Midwest was well traveled by indigenous people and others well before the surveyors showed up. Much of Alaska is sill more remote today than the West was 200 years ago. Don' want to fly in? Don't expect me to build you an interstate to nowhere. Get a horse, mule, reindeer, yak or sled dogs, but this is the frontier, love it as it is or leave it alone.
Using the most modern of equipment would not get the same job done within a time equivalent of the PLSS heydays. Alaska is not conducive to the plethora of checkerboard fields I see as I fly across the US. It is necessary to rethink what has to be done for the expected economic uses of the next 100 years.
Paul in PA
The colonial states were not formed from the public domain, so while you are correct that my use of the word "all" was technical incorrect, you are comparing apples to oranges. The colonial states did not need to have the federal government survey any Land because the federal government did not have any lands in those states to survey.
The PLSS works in rugged lands throughout the west just fine, including the many townships surveyed traditionally in Alaska. In checkerboard country private land boundaries have stayed with the original plan. In more rugged and built up areas the locals have created boundaries based on the PLSS that meet local needs. It would be inappropriate for the federal government to try to design local communities across the west.
In Alaska the state disposes of land by a variety of methods, where appropriate aliquot parts are used, in other places aliquot parts are subdivided by the state to meet local needs and provide revenue to the state. In some areas remote cabin sites ate staked by private individuals and then surveyed under state authority, but in all cases the boundaries are somehow tied back to section, township or other federal survey lines.
BTW, on further inquiry, I've since learned that the DPPS projects showing various townships with corners fixed by their NSRS coordinates do include an extensive series of permanent control monuments that have accurately determined NSRS coordinates at the same epoch as the township, with full metadata, and located so that all of the corners within the township may be located by RTK GPS methods without even needing to tie to the CORS network.
This makes opposition to the coordinate-based township completely brain dead since the DPPS plans as implemented are obviously going to perform better than the alternative approach of just marking corners along the township exteriors at two mile intervals on average. This is what real progress looks like: sensible adaptation to new capabilities to make a better performing system at lower cost to all parties.